Jesus Knows Our Lonliness?

Jack Graham

To varying degrees, each of us has felt the pain of rejection and loneliness. When it comes, it can be completely debilitating. Such pain may even be yours at this moment.

Perhaps you're isolated in your office cubicle day after day. Or maybe you're constantly surrounded by people, without ever feeling connected. Or perhaps you're facing a crisis that no one on earth can endure for you.

Friend, I'm here to tell you that Jesus knows exactly how you feel. That might sound a little strange, since Jesus is God, surrounded with multitudes of angels in celestial glory! But don't forget that Jesus once walked on the earth as a man. "He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not" (Isaiah 53:3).

Jesus experienced earth's loneliness to the greatest degree. Laden with our sins on the cross, he experienced horrific separation from the Father in that moment when he cried, "My God… why have You forsaken me?" He suffered it willingly, for the joy set before him—the joy in knowing that you and I would never have to be separated from God by our sin! And he sent the Holy Spirit so that even on earth, we will never be alone!

"And, behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20).